"Sorry, sir. Kettle barely warm. Shall I light the spirit-lamp?"
"Never mind."
I came out on deck slowly. It was now a matter of conscience to shave the land as close as possible-for now he must go overboard whenever the ship was put in stays. Must! There could be no going back for him.
After a moment I walked over to leeward and my heart flew into my mouth at the nearness of the land on the bow. Under any other circ.u.mstances I would not have held on a minute longer. The second mate had followed me anxiously.
I looked on till I felt I could command my voice. "She will weather," I said then in a quiet tone. "Are you going to try that, sir?" he stammered out incredulously.
I took no notice of him and raised my tone just enough to be heard by the helmsman.
"Keep her good full."
"Good full, sir."
The wind fanned my cheek, the sails slept, the world was silent. The strain of watching the dark loom of the land grow bigger and denser was too much for me. I had shut my eyes-because the ship must go closer.
She must! The stillness was intolerable. Were we standing still?
When I opened my eyes the second view started my heart with a thump. The black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right over the ship like a towering fragment of the everlasting night. On that enormous ma.s.s of blackness there was not a gleam to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It was gliding irresistibly toward us and yet seemed already within reach of the hand. I saw the vague figures of the watch grouped in the waist, gazing in awed silence.
"Are you going on, sir," inquired an unsteady voice at my elbow.
I ignored it. I had to go on.
"Keep her full. Don"t check her way. That won"t do now," I said, warningly.
"I can"t see the sails very well," the helmsman answered me, in strange, quavering tones.
Was she close enough? Already she was, I won"t say in the shadow of the land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were, gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.
"Give the mate a call," I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as still as death. "And turn all hands up."
My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the land.
Several voices cried out together: "We are all on deck, sir."
Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer, towering higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had fallen on the ship that she might have been a bark of the dead floating in slowly under the very gate of Erebus.
"My G.o.d! Where are we?"
It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands and absolutely cried out, "Lost!"
"Be quiet," I said, sternly.
He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair. "What are we doing here?"
"Looking for the land wind."
He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.
"She will never get out. You have done it, sir. I knew it"d end in something like this. She will never weather, and you are too close now to stay. She"ll drift ash.o.r.e before she"s round. O my G.o.d!"
I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head, and shook it violently.
"She"s ash.o.r.e already," he wailed, trying to tear himself away.
"Is she? . . . Keep good full there!"
"Good full, sir," cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, child-like voice.
I hadn"t let go the mate"s arm and went on shaking it. "Ready about, do you hear? You go forward"-shake-"and stop there"-shake-"and hold your noise"-shake-"and see these head-sheets properly overhauled"-shake, shake-shake.
And all the time I dared not look toward the land lest my heart should fail me. I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for dear life.
I wondered what my double there in the sail-locker thought of this commotion. He was able to hear everything-and perhaps he was able to understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close-no less. My first order "Hard alee!" re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched the land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self was making now ready to slip out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he was gone already . . .?
The great black ma.s.s brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away from the ship"s side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?
I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and her very fate hung in the balance, with the black ma.s.s of Koh-ring like the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosph.o.r.escent flash revealing the gla.s.sy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was impossible to tell-and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper, which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run down for it I didn"t dare. There was no time. All at once my strained, yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the ship"s side. White on the black water. A phosph.o.r.escent flash pa.s.sed under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognised my own floppy hat. It must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn"t bother.
Now I had what I wanted-the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand . . . too proud to explain.
And I watched the hat-the expression of my sudden pity for his mere flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of the sun. And now-behold-it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternway.
"Shift the helm," I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still like a statue.
The man"s eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round to the other side and spun round the wheel.
I walked to the break of the p.o.o.p. On the overshadowed deck all hands stood by the forebraces waiting for my order. The stars ahead seemed to be gliding from right to left. And all was so still in the world that I heard the quiet remark "She"s round," pa.s.sed in a tone of intense relief between two seamen.
"Let go and haul."
The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And now the frightful whisker"s made themselves heard giving various orders.
Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing!
no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on the way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command.
Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a darkness thrown by a towering black ma.s.s like the very gateway of Erebus-yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.
FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES A STORY OF SHALLOW WATERS CHAPTER I
ONE day-and that day was many years ago now-I received a long, chatty letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in Eastern waters.
He was still out there, but settled down, and middle-aged; I imagined him-grown portly in figure and domestic in his habits; in short, overtaken by the fate common to all except to those who, being specially beloved by the G.o.ds, get knocked on the head early. The letter was of the reminiscent "do you remember" kind-a wistful letter of backward glances. And, amongst other things, "surely you remember old Nelson," he wrote.
Remember old Nelson! Certainly. And to begin with, his name was not Nelson. The Englishmen in the Archipelago called him Nelson because it was more convenient, I suppose, and he never protested. It would have been mere pedantry. The true form of his name was Nielsen. He had come out East long before the advent of telegraph cables, had served English firms, had married an English girl, had been one of us for years, trading and sailing in all directions through the Eastern Archipelago, across and around, transversely, diagonally, perpendicularly, in semi-circles, and zigzags, and figures of eights, for years and years.
There was no nook or cranny of these tropical waters that the enterprise of old Nelson (or Nielsen) had not penetrated in an eminently pacific way. His tracks, if plotted out, would have covered the map of the Archipelago like a cobweb-all of it, with the sole exception of the Philippines. He would never approach that part, from a strange dread of Spaniards, or, to be exact, of the Spanish authorities. What he imagined they could do to him it is impossible to say. Perhaps at some time in his life he had read some stories of the Inquisition.
But he was in general afraid of what he called "authorities"; not the English authorities, which he trusted and respected, but the other two of that part of the world. He was not so horrified at the Dutch as he was at the Spaniards, but he was even more mistrustful of them. Very mistrustful indeed. The Dutch, in his view, were capable of "playing any ugly trick on a man" who had the misfortune to displease them. There were their laws and regulations, but they had no notion of fair play in applying them. It was really pitiable to see the anxious circ.u.mspection of his dealings with some official or other, and remember that this man had been known to stroll up to a village of cannibals in New Guinea in a quiet, fearless manner (and note that he was always fleshy all his life, and, if I may say so, an appetising morsel) on some matter of barter that did not amount perhaps to fifty pounds in the end.